Toll Deliver Support to Aboriginal Project

A Toll truck has arrived in Katherine with clothing donations collected from across Australia. This is part of a project to help support women’s business enterprises in the Northern Territory Indigenous community of Jilkminggan.

Toll Express and Toll NQX stepped up, using their national road freight network to pick up donated goods from nine locations across Australia and hand them over to ELP in Katherine.

“We have a clear commitment to help Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their communities to prosper and grow, so to be able to support initiatives like this even in a small way is important to us,” said Larry O’Regan, Toll Express General Manager.

Enterprise Learning Projects Co-ordinator Tanya Egerton says the organisation was overwhelmed by the response to what was meant as a modest clothing drive.

“We had no idea how we would get all these generously donated clothes from around Australia to our warehouse in Katherine so we were incredibly grateful when Toll agreed to pick it all up and deliver it to us,” said Tanya.

Toll picked up around 500 cartons of clothing from nine storage sheds in the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne and Adelaide and used its regular direct road services from Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne to transport it all to Katherine.

The group will establish pop-up op shops in the Katherine region with the donated clothes, generating seed funds for new creative enterprises, providing the women of Jilkminggan with work opportunities and greater economic empowerment.

According to Toll, it has a coordinated national approach to Indigenous engagement led by its Indigenous Engagement Steering Committee and implemented through its Reconciliation Action Plan, in order to better acknowledge the role that first Australians play within its business, communities, suppliers, customers and the wider society.